


it kills you slowly

by saphinias



Category: Bandom, Fueled by Ramen, fun.
Genre: Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-10 06:03:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saphinias/pseuds/saphinias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles set throughout the Some Nights tour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. lyric therapy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Nate guessed that he should be grateful that nobody could see how screwed up he was, that was the way a normal person should feel. But he wanted to rip himself open, and show people. Terrify people. Have people understand. He guessed that was because he was a songwriter. Lyrics were therapy.

Nate wished that he only had to meet fans after really great concerts. He felt fantastic after them and that’s when he came off the best. Any other time it was just…half ass.

Sometimes he would stay up late searching his name on youtube. Because in all honesety, he was that narcisstic. In quite a few of the interviews he was varying degrees of hung over, and you could really tell sometimes. But every time he checked the comments, nobody ever mentioned it. Whenever he talked about how much he drank, nobody commented about that, either. It was normal. He was okay to them.

And Nate guessed that he should be grateful that nobody could see how screwed up he was, that was the way a normal person should feel. But he wanted to rip himself open, and show people. Terrify people. Have people understand. He guessed that was because he was a songwriter. Lyrics were therapy.

But the thing was, he had ripped himself open, but no one was looking. They just blindly sang along, not noticing the metallic tang of blood in the air, and choosing to look away from his rotting insides on display. He was crawling after every performance, having poured himself completely out. They cheered for this, but they didn’t taste the blood coating every syllable of the encore.

After the adrenaline wastes away, he sits down. He sits, and he drinks, because he always leaves behind a part of himself on stage. He feels it missing, so he drinks and wonders when the last piece will fall away. He wonders what will happen, and if he’ll ever get used to the emptiness.

Most of all, he wonders if there will be any lyrics left.

Lyrics were therapy, but they killed him as payment.


	2. sixty seconds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate hated people.

Nate hated people.

He hated his fans slightly less, but they were still real fucking annoying.

This clashed with his need to be nice.

Nate wanted to be one of those funny, charismatic, easy-to-talk-to people, but he hated people too much. So instead he sang about himself, and his eccentricities, and his needless depression, but he didn’t sing about his hate for people

And Nate thought that maybe he should write a song. Maybe it will cure him of his hatred. (Nate thought this on a bi-weekly basis.)

Other times he thinks writing a song about it will just increase his hatred, and the hatred in the world. Both are already at unmanageable levels, he doesn’t want to irresponsibly increase either.

So he decides not to write a song, like always.

But this time his brain decides not to listen, and the song starts to compose itself without permission while he pisses that night.

Sixty seconds of this awful thing is floating around in his head, threatening to drive him crazy if he doesn’t write it down.

So he relents, and gives it the working title of Sixty Seconds.


	3. with a crash and a sigh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Nate thinks.

Nate thinks sometimes he shouldn’t drink this much. Especially nights before early-morning interviews.

Nate also thinks that maybe he should break up with his girlfriend. He’s not doing her any favors by staying with her.

Every once in a while Nate thinks that he should probably get some antidepressants. The guys would find him a lot more manageable.

But he likes rejoining reality every morning with a crash. He likes how painfully clear everything is in the white morning light compared to the fog of the night before.

And he likes the simplicity of always having someone to come back to. Of always having someone a call away that will definitely care about whatever stupid, crazy things he has to say.

And he thinks that somehow his depression, that he has carried for so long, has finally consumed him. It changed him irreversibly and killed the before parts of him, so his depression defines him. It is him. If that was taken away, what would be left?

So he picks out the good things in the transparent morning, tells his girlfriend about them each night, and smiles because this is who he is now, and it’s alright.


	4. to find relief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relief from what? It’s a question he’s never been able to answer.

Nate stares at himself in the mirror.

Fidgets.

Stares some more.   Adjusts his collar.

Why doesn’t he feel different?  He’s in the middle of a sold out tour, for _his_  band.  His band that  _he_  writes the songs for, that  _he_  sings for.  So why hasn’t something changed?

_I can’t make a name for myself, sometimes I break down and cry_

The line echoes in his head, bounces around and never settles.  He’s made a name for himself, a name that thousands of people know.  It’s all he’s wanted for the last decade of his life.  It’s what he’s been striving for all these years.

And yet he’d rather go to bed and sleep for a day and a half than go out and play the show.  Of course, he  _will_  go out and play the show.  He’ll love it, just like every other show.  He loves the adrenaline, he loves singing all-out until it gets painful, and he loves that the crowd of _his fans_  knew the lyrics and sang along.

But right now, he just wants to close his eyes and find relief.  Relief from  _what?_   It’s a question he’s never been able to answer.  He just knows that it’s always there, a constant weight tying him down.  

Nate grins at himself in the mirror.  He looks crazy.  He lifts his eyebrow as high as they can go, and pushes them higher with his fingers.  He continued making faces at himself until looking at the time on his phone.  Time to go.

Despite himself, Nate bounces excitedly.  Maybe he’d want to sleep again tomorrow, but right now he had a show to put on.  He’d puzzle out the way success wasn’t making him as happy as he thought it would then.


	5. nothing a nice crack can't fix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had been a normal day.

Nate didn’t understand the phrase “struggling with depression”. You didn’t struggle with depression, it played dirty and cheated so you would just lay down and take it. That was the whole point.

You didn’t have any say in the matter, and you didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. You couldn’t feel yourself falling, but you could sure as hell feel yourself hit the bottom.

Nate cracked his back at the memory.

It had been a normal day. Lazing around his shitty apartment, trying to find the will to write. A song, a line,  _something_. (He ate four bowls of slightly stale cereal for inspiration. He didn’t think a song about Lucky Charms would go over well, though.) After a fruitless day of cereal-eating and sighing, he flopped down face-first on his bed. Even that didn’t make him smile.

And that’s when he realized.

He tried to sleep after that, he did. But his heart was beating too fast and his back ached and  _how could he have let this happen?_  He forced himself to tears but it didn’t feel better because they wouldn’t come willingly. He got up and stared at his forcibly-red-rimmed eyes, but he was blank. He blasted music to maybe forget that it had even happened, but it only worked for a little while because  _it was still there inside him_.

And somehow after that he ended up with a pen in his hand, the cap hanging from his lips, scribbling shaky words on the other side of his Lucky Charms appreciation. And that made it a little better because his heart wasn’t beating so fast in his too-slow body and he could breathe again.

So yeah, the memory made his back a little uncomfortable, but it was nothing a nice crack couldn’t fix. 


	6. someone else's song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate experiences happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went to the show in Columbus and holy balls I'd forgotten how fucking brilliant Nate is. And damn he was positively glowing, and so this happened.

Singing It Gets Better to a crowd largely made up of teenage girls was probably one of the funniest things he's done in years. Maybe it's weird too (definitely weird) but a good percentage of them don't actually listen to his lyrics and blindly sing along. That was probably funnier than singing to them.  
But he still couldn't really help grinning to himself because some of them did listen and knew what it meant and sang it proudly right back to him, trying to catch his eye. And damn, that felt fucking good to see those girls so proud. What an age to be alive in.

All of the concerts so far were so fucking amazing, he was always excited to get back on stage if it was an encore or a new concert. And he had money to do stupid things and buy stupid things and everything was fucking glowing, and he was so happy. For the first time in maybe years, he was happy all the time instead of just on stage. He'd forgotten what it was like. It tasted like sweat and felt like a grin pressed into a slick stage. It feels like he's out of breath all the time and it's so good, always moving and doing something and singing and living.

And, god, his lyrics. Some of them didn't apply anymore and it's maybe a better feeling than happiness. He belted them out and sang them just like he used to when he still felt every crushing word, but they aren't so heavy anymore. Sometimes he feels like he's singing someone else's song, and sometimes he thinks maybe he is. Maybe he's not the same person as he was a few months ago when he still felt these things pressing on his chest every time he took a breath.

So when he walks off stage after Stars still hearing _no one has to know_ ringing in his ears, he has a drink in his hand but a stupid smile plastered on to his face. He's sweated through his shirt and his jeans are probably never going to come off they're so stuck to him, but he thinks that would be fine. If he could hold on to these moments forever, he would be fine.


End file.
